This book is the first to reveal the recent restorations and current furnishings in France's three presidential residences, from the famous Élysée Palace to two lesser-known centers of government-La Lanterne in Versailles and the Fort of Brégançon on the Riviera. Places of reception and retreat, machines of government and maintainers of secrets, sites of ceremony, solitude, and action, these “theaters” of history great and small are the successors to Versailles's Hall of Mirrors-they reflect a certain history of France. They are the places where the peerless skills of artisans working for the National Furniture Depository perpetuate France's grand tradition of decorative arts.